The particle that could unlock the secrets of the Universe

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One of the greatest journeys of modern science passed its most significant
milestone yesterday as physicists celebrated “reaching into the fabric of
the Universe” to find a new particle, the Higgs boson.

But even as the lecture theatres of CERN erupted into applause, beneath the
scientists’ feet the European particle accelerator was preparing a new set
of collisions to help to determine what that particle is actually like.

In an often emotional seminar, Rolf Heuer, director-general of the CERN
laboratory in Geneva, told colleagues that they had found a new particle,
that it appeared where they expected the Higgs to